Archives for April 2020

The White House Correspondents’ Association announced Monday that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has been rescheduled for Saturday, August 29th, 2020, same week as the 2020 Republican National Convention. After consulting with “public health and medical officials,” the White House Correspondents Association announced their new date, determined to “celebrate the kind [of] important journalism we have seen throughout this crisis.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association was also happy to confirm that their host, Kenan Thompson of SNL, and featured entertainer, Hazan Minhaj of Netflix’s ‘Patriot Act’, are both able to attend the new date, and that Bob Bain Productions will still be partnering with White House Correspondents’ Association to bring a refreshing new look to the classic dinner. The two entertainers signal a return back to the Dinner’s long standing tradition of featuring comedic headliners. But that won’t be the only big changes this year.

In February, the White House Correspondents’ Association’s President, Jonathan Karl introduced new awards recognizing accountability journalism and reportorial courage, which have incidentally become central topics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jonathan Karl is the author of the new bestseller, Front Row at The Trump Show.

President Trump, who has skipped the event for the past three years, has made no mention of attending the event this year.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is considering an appeal after a court ruling in favor of the journalistic freedom organization, PEN America. PEN America filed claims of retaliation against journalists on President Trump back in 2018 after, among other things, the President revoked CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials because of an unfavorable exchange in the briefing room. The DOJ is considering an appeal to the U.S. District Court Judge Lorna Schofield’s March 24th decision that allowed PEN America to proceed with their case against President Trump. However they will not be able to receive an appeal without permission from both Judge Schofield and the Second Circuit. The administration is also asking for a 6 week extension — from April 7th to May 19th — to respond to PEN America’s claim in light of the public health emergency. MediaPost reports the story here.

Surprising as it sounds, the top freeagent in the City of Los Angeles is a 69-year old deli waitress according to the LA Times. As the favored watering hole of some of the biggest names in Hollywood, Nat ‘n Al’s deli, closes under pressure from the pandemic, top celebrities, city officials and other LA moguls are rushing to the aid of the 41-year veteran waitress, Gloria Leon. With a list of regulars any networking agent would die for — including Lew Wasserman, Bruce Willis, Jodie Foster, Steve Tisch, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Larry King among others — Leon’s hospitality and kindness quickly gained legendary status within the City of Angels. According to a member of the LA police commission, “There is no politician, there is no City Council member, there is no billionaire, who is more influential in Beverly Hills than Gloria,” and William Morris Endeavor partner Richard Weitz described Gloria as perhaps “the most well-connected non-entertainment person in all of L.A.” Larry King offered Leon high praise, saying, “She is one of the great, great restaurant workers anywhere. I can’t think of anyone in her league.”

Greta Van Susteren steps up her game yet again, joining InvestigateTV’s Lee Zurik to launch Gray Television, Inc.’s new daily show, “Full Court Press Now,” to begin Monday, April 6th, after the late local news. Deadline reported the new show here.

Greta Van Susteren is Gray Television’s Chief National Political Analyst and the Host of their Sunday political show, “Full Court Press with Greta Van Susteren,” where she pushes top political figures for the best and latest in news. Now, teaming up with Lee Zurik, New Orleans’ most honored investigative reporter, Greta will be able to leverage local, real-time reporting from Gray Television’s nearly 100 newsrooms to fill gaps in COVID-19 coverage across the country. According to Gray Television’s release, “The show will keep close watch on what public officials, private companies, and health providers are doing to support Americans in these unprecedented times.” The statement went on to say the show would “feature heroes battling the pandemic and the brave Americans fighting to survive.”

Viewers can rest assured that this power duo will provide real time information on the COVID-19 pandemic. Lee Zurik is the anchor of the News Orleans TV Station, WVUE, and runs InvestigateTV, the investigative unit of Gray Television. In March, Lee and his team at InvestigateTV launched a comprehensive COVID-19 County-by-County Tracker in order to start gathering much needed data on the local distribution of the virus. With their interactive map, which is updated multiple times each day, users can track the latest COVID-19 data in real time organized by county.

Meanwhile, Greta’s show, “Full Court Press” is a weekly syndicated Sunday show that premiered in September 2019 and now plays in over 80% of the country. For the past month, Greta has been chasing down Coronavirus Task Force Members, health officials, and prominent politicians to give her audience the best in coronavirus coverage. The new daily show will build on Greta’s existing weekend show. Channel listings and showtimes can be found here.

 

One America Nation Network (OANN) has been removed from the seat rotation in the White House briefing room after OANN correspondent Chanel Rion attended two coronavirus task force briefings — on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week — despite not having her name on the seating chart. The Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday that a White House Correspondents’ Association member had asked her to leave, but Rion refused and told them she was there “as a guest of Stephanie Grisham,” the White House Press Secretary. The White House Correspondents’ Association, which represents White House journalists, sent a letter informing their members of the transgression before Wednesday’s briefing concluded. “We are writing to inform you that the WHCA Board has voted this evening to remove a news outlet from the rotation for a seat in the briefing room,” it said. “We did this because a reporter for this outlet twice attended press briefings in contravention of this policy. We do not take this action lightly. This is a matter of public safety.”

OANN and Rion have gained a favorable reputation with President Trump over the course of his presidency. Chanel Rion has Facebook pictures of herself socializing with the Trumps and has proudly “been aboard the Trump Train from its first week,”  according to an article in The Washington Post. Rion often asks questions that imply fringe conspiracies and has worked to reinforce White House narratives that defend Trump’s presidency. During Trump’s impeachment proceedings, Rion was in Ukraine with Rudy Giuliani, the president’s attorney, shooting a “multipart series promoting unfounded conspiracy theories aimed at defending Trump against the allegations at the center of his impeachment,” as reported by Politico. Later, when Trump was challenged about the racial rhetoric around the term “Chinese virus,” Rion asked Trump whether “Chinese food” was also racist terminology. According to The Washington Post, when Trump picked Rion for a question in Monday’s briefing, she compared coronavirus deaths to abortion deaths and asked if Trump agreed “with states who place coronavirus victims above elective abortions?” Once, after calling on Rion at a briefing, Trump reportedly said, “OANN. Very good. They treat me very nicely.”

 

Jonathan Karl, White House Correspondents’ Association President and ABC News’s White House reporter, says he notified Stephanie Grisham and the White House press office on Tuesday that OANN was in “a clear violation” of the guidelines put in place for coronavirus safety, according to The Washington Post. “The rules are clear. If you don’t have a seat in the briefing room on your given day, you cannot be there. The rules are established to protect the health of the White House press corps. We’re abiding by the [Centers for Disease Control’s] guidelines,” said Jonathan Karl. OANN founder and CEO Charles Herring sent an email arguing to the contrary, saying that Rion’s presence “was appropriate” because she had been invited although he did not specify who invited her or why.

On Tuesday, Jonathan Karl announced that the White House correspondent who was suspected of contracting the coronavirus tested negative, saying, “I have just been advised that our colleague who we learned last week had a suspected case of COVID-19 has finally received test results. They were negative.” The coronavirus scare prompted stricter guidelines in the James S. Brady briefing room, lessening the number of reporters from 25 to 14. “We understand these restrictions are deeply disruptive to our members and their ability to do their jobs,” the White House Correspondents’ Association said. “But we are forced to take these steps to do our part to ensure that there is a healthy pool available to cover the president and inform the public during this critical time.”

Jason Kilar, founding CEO of Hulu, is tapped by AT&T Inc. to be the next CEO of WarnerMedia Group. The WarnerMedia Group is made up of some of your favorite channels including CNN, HBO, Warner Bros movie studio, and the soon-to-be launched streaming platform, HBO Max. HBO is home to many acclaimed TV shows like Game of Thrones, Westworld, VEEP, Silicon Valley, Big Little Lies and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

Jason Kilar will report to John Stankey, the president and COO of AT&T who had previously held Kilar’s new position. According to Stankey, AT&T is interested in Kilar’s background in streaming to help their new platform take off. When asked about the decision, Stankey says, “His experience in media and entertainment, direct-to-consumer video streaming and advertising is the perfect fit for WarnerMedia, and I am excited to have him lead the next chapter of WarnerMedia’s storied success.”

This has been one of a number of leadership changes at AT&T. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson says he will stay with the company through 2020, but won’t look any further than that, and Stephenson acknowledges that Stankey is likely next in line to run the company. Before Jason Kilar was announced as CEO of WarnerMedia, there had been some consideration of Jeff Zucker, CNN president who runs all sports and news at WarnerMedia, for the spot.

Kilar worked a number of different roles at Amazon, including senior vice president of worldwide application software, before he founded Hulu in 2007. He continued to run Hulu through 2013, during which his innovative new ideas about consumer experience created conflict between Fox, NBCUniversal and the Walt Disney Co. – Hulu’s owners at the time. After leaving, he co founded another streaming company, Vessel, that was sold to Verizon in 2016. Kilar is a Pittsburgh Native and a Harvard Business School Alumnus.

Journalism leaders are struggling to catch their breath after what may have been the worst month in the history of local journalism. Declining ad revenue has been a problem in the industry ever since the Great Recession pulled around 70 percent of American newspaper’s ad dollars down the drain, but many of the larger national news organizations — such as The Atlantic, Business Insider, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal — managed to dodge the worst of the impact with their large reader bases. The local news industry, on the other hand, remained precariously dependent on local businesses for most of their ad revenue.  That is until coronavirus shutdowns across the country forced these local businesses to save their dollars and distance their images from the pandemic. 

As news industry analyst and Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get author, Ken Doctor writes, “This event isn’t just a black swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s parlance for an unexpected happening that forever alters the course of history. For dailies — in the U.S., in Canada, in the U.K., and really globally — it’s a flock of black swans.” Among this ‘flock of black swans,’ we have an ad revenue shortage, newspaper delivery shutdowns, event closings and falling paywalls to accommodate coronavirus news seekers, all threatening the future of our news.

Even while digital subscriptions are “way up,” at better known sources, according to Ken Doctor, “with new weekly signups up 2× to 5× over pre-virus times,” much of the local industry is still seeing layoffs, decreased publications and changing subscription models as companies try to survive the ad floor giving out. But the outlook is grim. “I’ve spoken with more than a dozen well-placed executives in the industry,” Doctor says, “and the consensus is that, in April, daily publishers will lose between 30 and 50 percent of their total ad revenue. Things are unlikely to improve until we’re past mass sequestration, whenever that is.”

Several prominent voices have begun to speak up for local journalism. Governor of Vermont, Phil Scott, whose state has recently seen a number of changes in their local news organizations, posted a tweet Sunday asking the public to consider subscribing to local newspapers. Monday, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would “dole out $25 million in grants to local news outlets and spend $75 million in a marketing drive aimed at news organizations internationally in response to the coronavirus-prompted economic downturn, which has caused advertising to plummet and has threatened media industry revenues,” as reported by New York Times. And last week, Twitter announced that they would be donating $1 million dollars evenly distributed between the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Women’s Media Foundation.

A few news organizations have pointed towards an even more wide reaching solution. The president and co-CEO of Free Press and Free Press Action, Craig Aaron, wrote a Columbia Journalism Review article detailing a $5 billion dollar government stimulus plan for the news industry. He recommended using the money to double the funds for public media, invest in support for daily and weekly newsrooms, and create a $2 billion “First Amendment Fund” for new innovations in news media. Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan also promoted the stimulus plan.

New York Times media columnist Ben Smith argued that newspaper chains are not worth saving and that the industry would be better off pivoting towards new online platforms. “Without careful restrictions, a huge share of that government money will go to doomed newspaper chains for whom a major goal…” Ben Smith reports, “…is paying a dividend to shareholders unwise enough to invest in his doomed business.” While the details of a relief package for local journalism still need to be hammered out, the fact that help is needed is widely understood. David Chavern, the president and CEO of the News Media Alliance, sent a letter to President Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi informing them of the danger of a recession in the ad market. “While that is bad in every circumstance, in the current environment it could prove fatal — both to publishers and the public,” it read. “As we move into a continuing phase of this crisis, we will be engaging with elected representatives in a discussion of options for actions the federal government could take to help sustain our local news ecosystem”